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On the face of it , he ’s a most unlikely mentor for this coevals of self - consciously American gardeners . But ask the loss leader of the fresh , distinctively native style that has grow up on this side of the Atlantic over the past few X and a disproportionate share lecture of their debt to Englishman Christopher Lloyd .
Christopher Lloyd in typically colorful mode . Photo by : Andrew Lawson .
The truth is that “ Christo , ” as he is experience to an surprisingly broad circle of horticultural admirer and friends , has made a long and grand career of confounding expected value . Son of a well - to - do man of affairs - turned - country - squire , Lloyd inherited a famous garden along withGreat Dixter , the 1450 ’s manor house theater in which , at 84 , he still lives * . Edwin Lutyens , Gertrude Jekyll ’s invention pardner , had helped Lloyd ’s father ( a noted gardener in his own rightfield ) set out the complex of yew hedges , lawns , paths , terrace and delimitation that border the house , and the Logos could sanely have been expected to content himself with play curator . He could have dedicate the years of his stewardship , National Trust vogue , to maintaining the status quo . Instead , Lloyd accept a grade in horticulture at the Wye College campus of the University of London and proceeded to make the Great Dixter garden distinctively , gloriously his own .
He became famous in part for his plantsmanship . That was what impress a new Dan Hinkley on his first visit to Great Dixter in 1980 . Seven years afterwards , Hinkley would incur Heronswood , the baby’s room that has become the pre - eminent source for Modern and rare garden plant in the United States , and he echo his confluence with Lloyd as crucial in his own development as a horticulturist .
Great Dixter ’s billow repeated borders . Photo by : John Glover .
What struck him was Lloyd ’s special sensibility . His genius , Hinkley realized , lie not only in his connoisseur ’s eye for a superscript species or cultivar , but also in the daring imagination with which he used his discovery . Lloyd ’s style of planting is not the harmonious pastel of English custom . Rather , he tests the limits of contrast , matching disharmonious peak and foliage to fulfill his coolly architectural landscape with drama . He will , for example , coalesce the lambent orangeness of a Saint John ’s chamomile ( Anthemis sancti - johannis ) with a magenta purpleness of an Armenian cranesbill ( Geranium psilostemon ) , or the bold leafage of a hardy Nipponese banana with the empurpled haze of self - sow Argentine vervain ( Verbena bonariensis ) .
That detail , Lloyd ’s willingness to let plants sow themselves and find their own seat within the garden , exemplifies what Marco Polo Stufano say made him love Great Dixter “ from the first moment I saw it ” in 1967 . Stufano was a young man in a haste then , having just taken over management of Wave Hill , a drop 28 - acre estate of the realm that , over the next couple of decennium , he would rick into the most exciting public garden in the United States . He did n’t get together Lloyd on that trip ; intention on see to it as many English gardens as potential , Stufano had no time to speak . There was a strong good sense of the military man , though , Stufano says , in the “ exemption ” with which he used the industrial plant .
Great Dixter ’s wild flower meadow . Photo by : Clive Nichols .
Stufano would pick up on the use of self - sown plant in his own garden making at Wave Hill : “ We always counted on self - sowings . ” What he found at Great Dixter , though , on that first trip ( he has returned many time since and now counts the owner as a friend ) was far more than this simple deception . Lloyd was an early counsellor of meadow horticulture ( he credits his mother with first bringing wild flower into the area of uncut pasturage through which one approaches the firm ) . He has , harmonize to Stufano , a crucial affection for specie - type plant or for cultivars in which the wild thanksgiving and beauty persist . This give his plantings an extraordinary fluidity . At Great Dixter , Stufano feel none of the “ blusher - by - number ” planting in sharply delineated block that he so disliked in American gardens of that era ( the belated ’ 60s and early ’ 70s ) . Instead , Lloyd let the plants immingle .
“ They drift , ” explain Stufano . “ They fall , they fall over each other , they climb up each other , they fraternise with each other . ” Yet , he adds , “ always with an middle to color combination and textural combinations . ”
That most difficult horticultural reconciliation act , of loosen the constraints on the plants without renounce esthetic control , is something we as Americans still need to study , agree to Stufano . Hinkley says that on a visit this past summer he found a model for horticultural matureness : Lloyd ’s appetite for plant novelties seems to have slackened , overtaken by a fascination with wringing startling Modern spirit out of tried - and - true plants by juxtapose them in unexpected ways .
It is Lloyd , though , who ( typically ) has the last word . Soon after taking on a young horticultural collaborator , Fergus Garrett , in 1993 , he wrote of how the two of them had just ripped out Edwin Lutyens ’ rose garden to make distance for an “ exotic garden ” in which they would experiment with flora combinations mean to make a tropic effect in late summer and fall . “ We ’re going place , ” wrote Lloyd , then well into his senior years , “ and it ’s exciting . ” If there is a spirit of American gardening , that must be it .
- Lloyd pass away before long after the issue of this article and has been greatly missed ever since .
